17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
works very well for a translator
This is everything it says that it is. It translates and it speaks.
Its translations are fine. I'm not quite sure what the previous reviewer meant when they said it gave them wrong translations. It gave me plenty of choices when I looked words up in German (and a couple other languages), and then checked them out by looking up the given German word or words...
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
R2D2 is easier to understand
I was so dissapointed by this product. I had hoped to use it to identify and translate Japanses words and practice pronouncing them correctly.
It takes many steps to do simple translations. This was frustrating in a relaxed atmopshere. It would be near impossible underpressure.
When you press for the talking translation it sounds like a tired robot in a large...
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
I was so dissapointed by this product. I had hoped to use it to identify and translate Japanses words and practice pronouncing them correctly.
It takes many steps to do simple translations. This was frustrating in a relaxed atmopshere. It would be near impossible underpressure.
When you press for the talking translation it sounds like a tired robot in a large can. Extremely difficult to identify what it is saying let alone try and duplicate it.
The other deal breaker was it only uses batteries. There is no way to charge it when not in use. You would need to carry around a case of batteries while traveling in order to use it throughout a trip.
The size was compact and light, that was a nice feature.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
This is everything it says that it is. It translates and it speaks.
Its translations are fine. I'm not quite sure what the previous reviewer meant when they said it gave them wrong translations. It gave me plenty of choices when I looked words up in German (and a couple other languages), and then checked them out by looking up the given German word or words. If you cross-check its quite easy to find the precisely-nuanced translation.
The speech function sounds robotic, but it is definitely pronounced correctly.
This device functions very well, it easily switches the direction of the language, and has a fast lookup with easy lookup of the defined words. If you switch applications, from dictionary to games to dictionary, you'll have to change the language back to what you were using. It takes a little bit to get used to-ten minutes reading the manual and you're fine. It's annoying to change the batteries, but mine came with an AC adapter, so if you're near an outlet, you'll be fine. Those are some minor issues, but what sets apart this translator is the sheer amount of entries that it has(450,000 per language, plus 200,000 phrases)--nothing else in this price range is even close.
This is easily the best value for anything you'll get in the $100-250 price range.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
My wife is German and I am learning polish. This model had the most words out of the others that I researched for the price. Once you put an hour or two in on the manual usage becomes easy.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
I ordered the XL1500 because I am moving to China for my business. Unfortunately, I had to return the product. The voice feature is so poor, I could barely recognize the english speaking voice, much less the chinese voice. The french, spanish, and german voices were not too bad. I was also disappointed that I could not figure out how to enter pinyin chinese and radical chinese characters, even after reading the poorly written manual three times. The clincher for me was that the headphone jack did not work, it just muted the voice feature altogether. The unit does have an AC jack, but does not come with an AC adaptor. I called Ace Photo to return the product and was informed of the 10% restocking fee.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
I bought the Ectaco Partner XL with high hopes it would help me in my Arabic class. My Arabic professor asked me where I got my translations for some of the words because they were not correct. I have found some of the translations useful, but for the most part, incorrect. I contacted the Ectaco and was told that if I wanted Arabic translation I should have bought just the Arabic-English Electric Dictionary instead of one with many languages. I'm hoping the translations for the other languages work better than the Arabic.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
I have a fairly favorable view of the "XL 1500, 15 Languages Talking Dictionary." I have been translating the Russian novel The Twelve Chairs and have found it very helpful. It does not have all the vocabulary that is in the novel, but it has a great deal of it. I have been able to move much quicker thru the book using this electronic dictionary, and using a regular paper dictionary as a backup. It has made reading the novel much more enjoyable and quicker.
On the negative side, the keys are very small and often you have to hit them two or three times to get the letter you want to show up on the screen. However,once you start to type a word it may recognize what you want after only putting in three or four letters, and you can get the meaning immediately without having to thumb thru a paper dictionary. I also felt the manual was not too good, but it did have the basic information there. After a week or so of working with the keyboard, I have been able to access the dictionary quite easily. The robotic voice is not good at all, but it does have correct pronunciations of the soft sound in Russian and the accents on the syllables seem to be correct. But it is true if you just listen to the word without knowing it ahead of time, you will not recognize it. We tested this in Spanish also with our son-in-law who speaks Spanish. He could not recognize the words, and he is a native speaker. Also I think it is a little pricey, but overall I find it useful for what I am doing.
Steve
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
I have a terrible experience with ECTACO's electronic dictionary. It was a total waste of my money. I needed a portable dictionary so I bought it directly through ECTACO's web-site, but it was... a trash, very infantry vocabulary determinations and didn't even have almost half of the vocabularies that I needed to find. What more frustrated me was that awful customer service when I tried to return the product. What a reluctant attitude toward return policy service was! They never sent the paper with a return policy in a packet with was within 30 days acception, not only that they told me to call back again and again and made me pass 30 days. Watch out folks! I am a college student working full time still trying to pay off the dept from that terrible dictionary that was not returnable nor helpful at all. I am So sad.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
Great price especially for traveling, I used it for looking up Korean and all the words I wanted to find were there. The speaking part is bad it is very robotic and even hard to understand what it was saying in English let alone another language, but if you can point to the word or say it in the other language you'll be fine. It took me about 15 min to have ease with all the buttons and what they do. **Don't count on the phrase book to help you any - that's bad! I recommend getting a small phrase book and memorizing then when you are traveling and you forget certain words look it up on this dictionary. I even called customer support for a question I had and they were very helpful. Remember to get the speaking part to press the shift button then the speaker button next ( this isn't that clear on the directions) you can press for either language you want.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)
I just got the XL-1500 as a present from my new husband and I have to say that I was very impressed. I already had another model from Ectaco for France but since we were planning to visit several countries he decided we should have this 15 language version. We are going on a grand tour through Europe for our honeymoon and I can wait to try it out in real life situations. It's incredible how much information is in this little machine and I can't believe how easy it is to use. It works just as well as the other one I had and we have already learned some phrases that we will need when we arrive in each country. We tried it out at this little Spanish restaurant near our house and it worked so well! The waiter was surprised at first because we pretended not to speak English and we surprised him after! We got everything we wanted plus a big smile!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
(
Saving...
